DED to work closely with DQA applicant organisations

The workshop focused on two crucial components of the preparation leading to the award - self-assessment and the submission document.

"One of the main objectives of the DQA secretariat is to ensure that companies begin to view the award criteria as a reference point for their own quality management systems and thereby understand the long-term advantages of internalizing its criteria into every facet of their organizations," said Esaa Kazim Co-ordinator General of Dubai Quality Award and Director General, DFM. "The secretariat plans to work closely with all applicant companies through a series of dedicated workshops, to ensure that the criteria of the DQA Excellence model is clearly understood," he added.

He also urged companies to register early for the DQA in order to benefit from such workshops that the DED plans to hold.

"The DQA is not a competition where there are losers, as everyone gains from entering," said Dr. Lway Nackasha, Adviser, Quality and Excellence, DED. "This workshop is designed to have two main objectives to use the self assessment as a structured tool to generate a plan for continuous improvement and to generate a submission document for the DQA as a by-product of this process," he added.

Derek Medhurst, Director D&D Excellence Ltd who has worked with the EFQM Excellence Model since 1993 led the DQA workshop. Medhurst's long dedication to Excellence was recognised in 2003 when he received the EFQM's first ever Personal Recognition Award for Leadership in the Excellence arena.

The workshop covered the background and concepts on which the DQA Excellence model in based in addition to the meaning of excellence in both the process and the results. It will prepare the applicant organizations for self-assessment and for writing the DQA submission report. Topics included basic planning, the structure of an application, what assessors look for, and using the outputs of the self-assessment workshop to create the submission.